Day 41 - When Foxie could have fed 41 pandas (or Teams day)!

We had a whole host of dream teams of volunteers on site today, with 30+ people on site in total throughout the day.

We had two deliveries of donated items collected from Wickes, which was fortunate as it meant we had sufficient step ladders to accommodate all of our volunteers.

We had Team Barn Exterior working as a large group to clean and clear the outside of the Barn, cutting back, digging up and clearing to try and make sure its outsides match its shiny, clean insides following the recent internal progress. 

Team Steam and Clean managed incredible progress as a party of four to put The Rug Doctor to work; first in The Barn, with a significant stain removed from the carpet in the rooms off of the Main Hall and then, after an exciting trolley ride to new environs in The Lodge, The Doctor was set to work cleaning further carpets in there too.  Alongside that, the Team also managed to utilise the fantastic steam cleaner donated to us previously to clean the upholstered chairs in The Lodge Main Hall.  A clean sweep (or steam) of successes all round - you can see them taking a short break at the end of the day in one of the photos!

Team Curtains were hard at work in the Site Office with our make shift ironing room, sorting, ironing and checking the curtains from various places and then rehanging those where it is now safe (by which we mean appropriately clean) to do so - The Accessible Suite was the first to benefit with its curtain poles reaffixed securely and clean curtains now in place to complement the new nets installed previously.

Team Tree-mendous were back as a dynamic duo, not for trees this time but for the clearance of the greenery and tonnes of bamboo which were taking over the roof and the side of The Coach House - the bamboo plants were enormous (see photo from this evening with Volunteer Gordon for scale) and had to be removed and cut back in order to prevent damage and further damp to the wall and further roof which they were overtaking.  Foxie took a climb to inspect progress and have a little slide down the roof and was then appropriately extracted by Volunteer Kester back to grounded safety.  We can't show you the after photograph as it was dark when they had finished work today but we'll take a daylight photo for comparison soon too.

Team Kitchen were a further duo working hard to start tackling the kitchen in the Main House to dispose of anything which should have been long gone and which might start/continue eminating bad smells. Although we don't plan to use it soon, the Main House kitchen is now in a much improved, and better smelling, state!

Team Gold Room did amazing work in The Gold Room, continuing the careful cleaning started previously and removing mould, cobwebs, layers of dust and in on instance a live slug! to bring it back to its shining glory.  It's a slow-moving task, but excellent progress is being made and they've started to remove the curtains for a proper clean - we'll just need to check them and then we'll need to see if we can identify a friendly dry-cleaner who might be able to show them some love for us.

Team Gatehouse tackled the oven in The Gate House, installed some window blinds and lampshades and did significant work clearing the outside area around the building and pressure washing the driveway.

Team Sundial Garden made stunning further progress on clearing the, so far, untamed areas of the garden and removing some of the rotten store which was unfortunately causing damp to Foxlease House - their hard work means it looks so much more tamed now but the real difference will be when things start to bloom and flourish next year.

We had other volunteers completing important other tasks on site too (with less jazzy Team Names) and our Magician Electrician returned for another day and completed a number of very important tasks for us, installing a new PIR light at the side of the Main House to replace one which was broken (thank you Amazon Mountain) and a number of other electrical tasks.

SO many photos; so little blog space.  We've shared some today and we'll share more soon but it's a great sign we can't manage to document everything as it means there is so much progress being made!

Precision tasks tomorrow and a chance to regroup before our insurance inspection on Thursday, Love Foxie x